Bitpoint Set to Resume Services Following Last Month’s Hack

Bitpoint, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, has announced that it will be resuming its trading services.

The announcement, which was made earlier this week, confirmed that the exchange will be making its cash withdrawals and deposit services to customers on August 6. All over-the-counter trading services (including MT4 trading and leverage trading services) will be reopened on August 9, while cryptocurrency spot trading services will also resume on August 13.

Bitpoint suffered a hack back in July, in which about 3.5 billion yen ($32 million at the time) was stolen. In an official announcement, the exchange revealed that 2.5 billion yen ($23 million) of this money belonged to customers, while 1 billion ($9.2 million) was its own money.

The hackers explicitly targeted at the exchanges hot wallets, which held five crypto assets; Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Its cold wallets, however, remained untouched.

In a report by CoinDesk Japan, Bitpoint assured that the resumption of services is following a thorough safety assessment of its storage infrastructure. Per the report, the exchange confirmed that the affected bitcoin wallet would no longer be used.

“We have been diligently implementing recovery measures and examining and implementing measures to prevent a recurrence. Based on these measures, we plan to resume various services step by step in the following manner within the scope of ensuring the safety of the system from the services with high customer needs,” the press release stated.

The resumption of services is just the latest in recovery efforts that Bitpoint has embarked on in the wake of its hack. The exchange has remained transparent with its customers so far, even going as far as revealing how badly they were hit by the hack.

In a document released just days after the hack, Remipoint Inc., Bitpoint’s parent company, showed that the entire breach occurred due to unauthorized access to the private keys of its hot wallets. It again confirmed that its cold wallets were utterly unharmed, although it would continue to monitor the situation. It was at this point that all its services were also suspended.

Bitpoint also revealed via the document that it would be compensating all 50,000 customers who were affected by the breach, although these compensations would be done in cryptocurrencies, and not fiat currency transfers.

Investigations into the hack and its details are still ongoing, as the individual or group behind the security breach is still yet to be known. In its post-hack report, the exchange stated that it would be co-operating with the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), a self-regulatory association made up of other crypto exchanges based in the country that enforces investor protection standards across the industry, to monitor asset movements that could potentially be associated with the hack.

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About Jimmy Aki

Jimmy has been following the development of blockchain for several years, and he is optimistic about its potential to democratize the financial system.